Wine

Sweet taste of success

Sicily's wineries find a winning strategy

OUTSIDE Campobello di Licata in Sicily, Giuseppe Milazzo's sparkling modern winery, surrounded by 70 hectares of vineyards, has been a cradle for the renaissance of Sicilian wine. At a time when other European winemakers are having to rip up vines because they cannot sell their wines, the top Sicilian vintners have been planting. Their success offers a lesson for winemakers all over the world.

Making fine wines certainly represents a change of tack for Mr Milazzo, who started his career as an agent for various arms manufacturers. Twenty years ago, he spent several months in prison on suspicion of arms trafficking, and subsequently won damages for wrongful arrest. By comparison, the wine industry is rather less alarming. But new planting for wine remains fraught with commercial risk; there is a global wine-glut and Sicily is already one of Italy's biggest wine-producing regions.

The Sicilians have sensibly been cutting production of “bulk” wines, and concentrating on exporting fine wines in bottles. Their move up-market actually began two decades ago, after a sommeliers' conference when visiting experts gave an embarrassing thumbs down to their host's wines. “The verdict was a terrible blow. Sicily had offered its best,” recalls Franco Pisa, head of Assovini Sicilia, the wineries' association. But Sicily's wineries bounced back, ditching local grape varieties to plant popular international favourites such as chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon. Now that everyone grows chardonnay and cabernet, the Sicilians have cleverly returned to their roots by making wines based on local varieties like Nero d'Avola, thus pandering to more educated and inquisitive consumers.

“Understanding trends is crucial. We cannot alter consumer taste; we must follow it,” says Diego Planeta, who has built his own wine business in southern Sicily. Last year his company sold 2.2m bottles, around half of that abroad. Mr Planeta was one of the first Sicilians to realise that lessons could be learned from the New World wineries, in particular their use of cold technology to combat Sicily's torrid summer heat. Sicilian firms had usually employed winemakers from France and northern Italy. Mr Planeta hired an expert from Australia, which has wine-growing regions with climates closer to Sicily's. Other Sicilians have followed, such as Calatrasi, a winery near Palermo.

There are some challenges, however, that only the locals are properly equipped to deal with. In the fiercely competitive global wine market, Sicilian winemakers face a unique problem that has nothing to do with soil types or air quality. Magistrates in Sicily say that the island's economy is still controlled by the Mafia. Extortion is rife, although most businessmen are understandably taciturn on this subject. Fortunately, their wines can speak for themselves.